The other night I gathered my little mini-hanks of handspun singles and decided to give plying a whirl (sorry, I had to say it).  Armed with an easy-to-understand (cartoons!) Andean plying tutorial I found in Julia's spinning archives, I wound the yarn around my hand, remembered at the last minute to twirl the spindle counter-clockwise, and begun.  It was a little rough at first (I may or may not have muttered "feed easily off my wrist, my ass") but I eventually made some yarn:

Oooh!  Now that's fun.  The colors swimming next to each other look like a mossy brick.  Surely there is enough yardage to get a stripe in a hat, right?  I don't know many spinning terms but one of the few things I've read about so far and know enough to strive toward is "balance" in my plied yarn.  And it seemed to me that the first skein of yarn I plied is balanced; I haven't yet washed it, but it is so nice and calm and not twisting as it hangs.  Ditto for skein number two:

The rest of the singles I plied, however... not so balanced.  Not so balanced at all.  Until I figured out a solution:

Ah.  Balanced yarn.